


The surreal life

by basaltgrrl



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-05
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-11-28 07:27:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/671843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basaltgrrl/pseuds/basaltgrrl





	1. Chapter 1

Saturday morning, 10 a.m.

It was the urgent need to urinate that made him aware. Aware of his body, a churning nausea and desperate thirst, aware of his surroundings. The connection between the two – need and awareness – struck him as funny, and he choked back a laugh and realized that he actually felt quite awful. He didn’t dare open his eyes yet. Things smelled wrong. Smelled better than they should. The sheets, the mattress felt softer. 

His bladder was going to burst. He rolled to the side and cracked his eyes open. The wall was papered in a subtle floral print, white and pale green. The sun streaming into the room made the wall almost too bright to look at. There was a dark-stained bedside table with an attractive lamp that might be an antique. Behind him in the bed he heard someone take a deep, gurgling breath.

“Shite.”

He rolled the rest of the way out of bed and was standing far too suddenly; the room swam around him and he had to grab the wall to stay on his feet. When the blackness receded he dared a look over his shoulder.

Gene. It was Gene’s bed. With Gene in it. Still asleep, by the look of him, and oh god, naked but for a sheet. He leaned his pounding head against the wall, closed his eyes, and took deep, calming breaths which didn’t seem to do a thing for him. What the fuck. Squinted downwards—yes, he was naked, too.  
The bedroom door opened and Annie walked in with a tray. She was dressed; he was both relieved and disappointed by this fact, and then immediately flustered and so taken by surprise that he held out both hands to take the tray from her.

“Uhhh,” he said.

“I thought you two would want some coffee pronto,” she replied, smiling. She seemed to take his nakedness in stride. “Sit down, Sam, before you fall!” She rescued the tray from him and set it on the dresser at the end of the bed. While she poured a cup he sank back down on the bed and then roused himself enough to look around for clothes.  
“Looking for these?” There was a teasing note in Annie’s voice as she held out his pants.

-#-

Friday evening, 11:35 p.m.

“Annie! Annie!” Sam pounded on her door—this was her door, wasn’t it? Pounded again and rolled sideways against the frame, breathing deep of the night air and willing the street lights to stop moving. Oh, the night air, that smell, the way it smelled after a night of drinking. There was something he had to tell her. It was important. Something so important he had come here, to her building. She lived in a nice building. Nicer than his. Brickwork. Plantings next to the walk. He liked it almost as much as he liked her.  
The door moved behind his shoulder and he almost fell in after it, caught himself and stood swaying. He turned to face her with exaggerated care. She had her arms crossed, had changed for bed with a big, blue dressing gown pulled tight around her shoulders.

“Annie!” he grinned, happy and feeling like a little puppy. “I found you!”

“Go home, Sam. Go to bed.” Her expression was not inviting.

“Annie. I’m sorry for…” he paused, trying to remember. “Them. I’m sorry for, about them.”

“You don’t have to be. I can take care of myself.” She leaned closer. “What happened to your eye?”

“Doesn’ matter. You. You matter, Annie.” He reached out to touch her cheek. She caught his hand and stopped it.

“Sam.” Her tone swam through the seas of his mind until it landed on the uncertain shores of his comprehension. She was not reacting the way he wanted her to. “Really. Go home!”

“I can’t. You know I can’t.”

She sighed heavily. “Go to your flat, I mean. Go sleep it off. Be a good boy.”

“Can’t! Don’t want to go there.”

“Sam Tyler! Pull yourself together. You can’t stay here.”

“Now that… I know I can’t. I have to tell you something. S’important. Annie. Don’t close the door!”

She stopped with two inches to go, sighed. “What is it?”

And suddenly he had to turn away, had to bend over the nice evergreen bushes and turn himself inside out, vomit splashing into the dirt, and fortunately he didn’t mind the sensation too much because his head was swimming in alcohol. But she minded; he heard the door close behind him. She was too polite, too sweet to slam it, but it closed with a sad and conclusive snick. 

He leaned into the bushes and scrubbed his face with both hands. “Shite.”

-#-

Friday, 7:45 p.m.

“Fuck the lot o’ you,” Sam enunciated with care. He stood, turned on his heel, took two slightly unsteady steps toward the door of CID. Somehow he had managed to stun the rest of them into silence. Perhaps it was the vehemence of his pronouncement, the note of genuine disgust. Perhaps it was that they were all drunk to stupefaction. Perhaps they were staring at a communal vision of the Virgin Mary hanging over his head.

In any case, he meant it with all his heart.

“Go on then! With you and Cartwright gone this’ll be a right manly party!” Ray drawled.

Sam spun on his heel again, surprisingly easy to do in the Cuban heels. His whisky-loose joints helped in the matter.

“Fuck you particularly, Carling. Ham-handed Neanderthal. Surprised you ever get a bird back to that flea-infested shack you call a home.” Yes, the whisky had him good and lubricated, and while the insults were not his most creative they would do for the moment.

Ray leapt to his feet, bounced off a desk and then off Chris, and landed a sloppy right on Sam’s shoulder. Sam twisted with it, feeling light and amused and actually eager for the punch up, and drove a fist into Ray’s belly.

It felt pretty good. Yes. Would have felt better were Annie there to witness, but a good happy feeling. Sam threw his hip against Ray’s folded torso and sent him sprawling but was taken unawares by something smashing the side of his own head. He spun, ears ringing, to see Gene, who gave him a wild-eyed grin and a left to the belly. Sam bent over himself and regretted the last three samplings of whisky. The pain was taking its time on the way to his brain, but there were parts of his body that already knew what was going on – his diaphragm, for instance, spasming in the effort to draw breath, and his knees buckling beneath him. Gene rubbed a hand across his back almost tenderly as he slipped past and delivered the next blow to a still gasping Ray.

Ah. So this was an indiscriminant attack, a Gene on the rampage, as it were. And with that realization the pain arrived and Sam sprawled on his hands and knees examining the dirt on the floor until he could actually draw breath again.

It was on. It was fucking on.


	2. Chapter 2

Friday, 6:39 p.m.

There was a voice on the other end of the line. Tinny and distant, but there was a desperate tone to the woman's voice that made Sam press the phone hard against his ear until it burned. "Sam. We're trying to bring you back, but we need your help. We need to work with us, Sam."

"I'm listening," he said in a stage whisper. Behind him a roar of laughter split the clouds of cigarette smoke in CID and a chair clattered to the floor. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. These fucking guys, any excuse for a piss up, although solving the Harrison abduction case had been a triumph. But wasn’t it a triumph that could be celebrated down at the Arms?

“Sam,” said the tinny voice from the phone. “We’re losing you.” Then something else that was drowned out by a huge cheer from the other end of the room as Gene emerged from his office with a bottle in either hand. Sam turned to glare across the room into Gene’s slitted eyes. “Sam. You’ve got to fight.” Sam pressed the receiver against his ear so hard it hurt. They were all conspiring against him—conspiring to keep him here. He gritted his teeth.

"Yes, yes, I'm here," he said, under his voice. Did it matter? Did he need to hide his phone call when the entire room was focused on Hunt? When they all thought he was mad as a hatter already?

“You’re so far away.” A distant voice. His mum’s voice. She sounded further away than she had when he was at uni, further away than when he had gone on holiday to Mexico. There were eons between them, lightyears. 

He heaved a sigh, the ache of the phone against his forehead, and acknowledged his own bone-deep yearning for a shot of whisky. It wasn’t so much to want, was it? Simple pleasures. No more mysteries. The freedom of getting pissed.

A new voice, clipped and analytical. "Signs of a seizure. It seemed like we were so close..."

“Alright you magnificent bastards,” Gene barked, drowning out the chatter. “We found the tosser, thanks to a right brilliant bit of investigation. And thanks to Tyler’s picky-pain insistence on turning over every last stone. You all played a part in it, and this is one of those days when I’m proud to be leading this team.”

He poured a quick splash of whisky into a motley collection of glasses. “To Tyler! And to the lot of yeh!” Gene tossed his back to an appreciative chorus of “Cheers, Guv!” and Sam, still watching from the shadows, felt a little something thaw somewhere deep inside. God, the man could lead a team. Even though he behaved like a thuggish ten-year-old half the time… and yet. 

Gene seemed to know this even from across the room, and held out the remaining unclaimed tumbler.

“Drink up, deputy.” 

 

Sam set the handset back on the receiver with a sigh of resignation. The smell of whisky wafted up from the glass, smoky and bitter and real, sharper and more vivid than that distant voice on the phone. 

 

-#-

 

Friday, 10:32 p.m.

 

“Gene! Gene!” Sam pounded on his door—this was Gene’s door, wasn’t it? Yes, he was almost entirely sure. Solid, but some paint peeling. That stupid wreath design painted below the window.

“Gene!” he yelled up at the second floor window.

“Shut up, you barmy git, before you wake the neighbors!” Gene hissed just behind him. He pushed Sam aside, worked the key in the lock and pulled Sam in after him, slamming the door. “Have you no sense of propriety? God, I can’t believe I said that. You’re rubbing off on me like a prossie’s lipstick.”

“Gene,” Sam blinked him into focus. “I wanted… to give you a piece of my mind. Wanker.” He didn’t think he had telegraphed his punch, but Gene took a step to the left and a moment later Sam was squirming with his face against the door and an arm twisted so far behind his back that even in his inebriated state it was causing a paralyzing stab of pain.

“Well give it to me then,” Gene snarled in his ear. “This oughta be rich.”

“You!” gasped Sam. He hitched a breath, continued, “Treat Annie--worse--than a dog.”

A push sent him sprawling to the carpet.

“I do not!”

“Do too!”

Gene prodded Sam in the arse with a toe, and snarled, “Ever since you put ideas in her pretty little head about ‘er ‘investigative powers’ I have treated her very well—like a full member of our team. But the fact is, Sam, that she’s a woman. She is not like you and me. She is softer. Rounder. Generally more curvy. And she cannot throw—or take—a punch like a bloke. Therefore she needs looking after in certain situations, more than a male member of our little family. You with me?”

Sam lurched off the floor and against Gene’s chest so quickly he managed to pin him against the wall. “Looking after her,” he hissed, “does not include pinching her arse, or suggesting that she offer ‘oral relief’, or being surprised that she can put two and two together to make four!”

“And when,” Gene spat with an answering push, “have you seen me do any of those things?”

“You call her petal!”

“It’s a term of endearment! It means I like ‘er!”

“Is that why you call me ‘Gladys’, then?”

“No, that one’s because of your gay boy science, as you know full well. Not to mention your slender little arse.”

“I’ll thank you not to mention my arse again. Or Annie’s, for that matter.” Sam straightened his jacket, swayed a little. Wondered if there was anything he should do just then to reclaim his dignity. Wondered if indeed his dignity needed reclaiming. Became aware that Gene was watching him with an ominous silence.

"What?"

"You're pissed off your arse. You're spending the night at mine; can't have you walking across town like this, you'll terrorize the old ladies."

"I am not!" He drew himself to his full height with a sneer.

"Come in to the sitting room. We'll have a nightcap."

It seemed like a plausible course of action. After swaying thoughtfully for several moments Sam followed Gene's broad back through a doorway, and accepted with blinking surprise a tumbler already filled with a finger of single malt. Gene gave him a nod of approval and gestured toward a pair of comfortable armchairs.

"Now let's discuss your misapprehensions about our charming Miss Cartwright..."

 

-#- 

 

Saturday, 2:05 a.m.

 

Sam peeled his eyelids open. 

He hadn't been asleep, had he?

There was movement, a gentle swaying, a rumble of tyres on pavement, soothing. The angle and the movement and the flashes of light made it hard to figure out what, exactly, was going on, but he applied his considerable investigative talents and realized that he was looking up at Annie’s face from below. From her lap, in fact. Also looking up at her… chest. She was wearing the pale blue oxford shirt she had worn at work that day, with a tan jacket thrown over it, not done up. She was not looking at him; she was looking forward. There was movement. Light crawled across the ceiling and he realized that they were in a car. In the back seat of a car. Her breasts swayed inside her shirt. He felt a rush of heat at the thought.

“Gene!” she snapped. “You almost hit that signpost!”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“I am your superior officer, and perfectly capable of driving this motor even after a night like this, and you can rest your pretty little head—arrgh!”

There was a noise and a force and a change so sudden that Sam couldn’t tell if it all happened at the same time. Something hit him in the face, in the chest, against his legs—there was a screech, and something was pressed against his face and against his back, and he couldn’t breathe. He felt like he was lost in that pressure for the longest time, and then things moved again. 

"Bloody hell!" Gene, muffled.

A groan.

Sam coughed. Drew breath and coughed again. There wasn't really enough air.

"Oi! Sweetheart! Did you crush him with your--Cartwright, can you hear me? Annie!"

Sudden urgent rustlings, shadows and more movement, and Sam gasped for breath as the world seemed to fade away around him...


End file.
